MessageBox button text broken on some platforms

[AntiApple4life]

I am using this library to port a WinForms app over to Linux, and things mostly work well! However, one issue I have had is that some distributions have an issue with the button text in MessageBoxes. Oddly, this does not happen on my main pc or laptop, both running arch, but it does occur on my Steam Deck.

MessageBox.Show("Are the buttons broken?", "test",MessageBoxButtons.YesNo, MessageBoxIcon.Question);

[sancheolz]

From which source was installed libgdiplus?
Try to navigate to libgdiplus.so location and do command
ldd libgdiplus.so
There must not be "not found" line in command 's output.

[JinShil]

I have the same problem on Raspberry Pi OS (Trixie). libgdiplus 6.1 is installed, but seems to have a bug.

The only solution I found was to compile libgdiplus from source (https://gitlab.winehq.org/mono/libgdiplus) and then package the resulting src/.libs/libgdiplus.so with my application.

[JinShil]

I've further tracked this down to pango. If libgdiplus is built with pango, the text does not appear. If libgdiplus is built without pango, the text appears.

Related: https://gitlab.winehq.org/mono/libgdiplus/-/work_items/4

[Tampa]

I dug into this a little bit some time ago. It appears that when you create a font collection from files pango will hold that and you can query it for all metadata about the individual fonts in the collection. It even returns when you call for the actual font data, but there is nothing in the return or whatever is in there isn't usable.

This is especially problematic as this doesn't just happen with custom font collections, but also certain system-wide fonts as it seems to relate somewhat to the font format itself. Some basic fonts work fine, the old stuff that's still in formats readable by windows 98, but the newer svg fonts etc. just explode.

Canonical has a bug open related to Keepass and there is other software depending on libgdiplus as well, yet so far all the current builds out there appear broken. It is strange they are being shipped in the first place as this bug does cause tests to fail. Not sure why those are just ignored. There is a working build back when focal was a thing, so 2021 at the latest. That's built with an older version of pango.

If you built with cairo for everything, leaving pango out of the mix, everything works fine. Pango is supposed to be more compatible in cross-platform applications. No idea what that specifically relates to as I couldn't find a difference in the font rendering at least, might be somewhere else.

So yes, pango is definitely the problem and it's pretty much already narrowed down to a single function, see winehq issue tickets, but so far no one has stepped up to fix it. And then there is the matter of pushing whatever fix out to actually make it upstream and onto systems.

[madewokherd]

I'm starting to wonder if we should deprecate the pango text backend. It also fails the unit tests. I'm not sure it's good enough in its current state that I can recommend using it, nor do I know anyone who would be able to give it the love it needs.